Color Shift
by ncfan
Summary: -Lin x Haku- Lin didn't always watch the sea alone.


**Characters**: Lin, Haku**  
Summary**: Lin didn't always watch the sea alone.**  
Pairings**: past Lin x Haku**  
Author's Note**: As I noted in _Shallow Seas_, whatever relationship the two have, or had, fascinates me. It makes you think "There has to be more to this than what we're seeing"; come on, I know you agree with me.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Spirited Away.

* * *

Lin remembers, still remembers—_because out of all the things she has forgotten, these memories just won't go; ironic, how nothing works out quite the way she'd like_—what he was like when he first arrived at the bathhouse. In a place where memories melt away like snowflakes, her keen mind has not yet relinquished those far-off scenes—was it years or merely months since they were last real?

She can't even remember what Haku's real name is—that completely unimportant but somehow integral detail has ceased to be remembered. She can't remember the name he went by before Yubaba discovered him, but Lin doubts anyone remembers, and her own name has long since been forgotten.

But she remembers how he used to be painted with color vivid and bright.

Chihiro-Sen-Chihiro wasn't the first foundling Lin found hiding out in Kamajii's boiler room; the boy who would later be known as Haku is the one who holds that distinction.

Lin remembers a time when she was still gentle, the time before Haku was Haku, only with pain and reluctance and bitterness thick on her tongue; when all was said and done, she was no longer capable of being gentle. Only rough Lin, only brisk and brusque Lin, only authoritative and sullen Lin.

But she was gentle, once.

It was in those days when she was able to be gentle, able to be soft, that she agreed readily to help Kamajii hide the nameless not-Haku in the bathhouse, to keep him away from Yubaba's corrupting influence.

She'd been dazzled by his colors, warmed by his kindness—by anyone's ready kindness, which Lin hadn't felt since before her arrival at the bathhouse. In his company the painfully small payment the foreman doled out (Yubaba's proxy), the payment that barely got them meals at the very place they worked at, had been worth it.

He was simply the only one Lin had ever trusted at that place.

She's sitting in her usual place now, staring moodily, almost obsessively, at the night-darkened sea. The water's a smooth sheet of black glass now; the train has disappeared over the horizon, carrying to her and stealing away Lin's hopes of ever being free.

Her shoulders tense as she hears Haku's sharp, ice-edged voice overhead.

Eventually the moment passes and Lin is able to breathe again, coming in sharp, ragged gasps, that do not—_Do not, she emphatically tells herself, over and again until she's able to believe her own lie_—contain even a suggestion of wasted tears for a cold shell of a boy.

She tips her head back, eyes closed and lips slightly parted to taste the sweet, salt-scented air as she starts to remember.

Lin didn't always watch the sea alone.

But eventually, Yubaba found him, as Yubaba finds everyone, and does _not_ allow them to escape from her clenched fist.

It only took a moment for her to transform the nameless boy, to sap him of all his colors.

And the boy Lin once knew became Haku, the white, the black, the thousand shades of gray. But no more color. No more jade green in the eyes that became gray and hard as forged steel, brittle as evening ice.

And it became clear that Lin would always be alone.

She can find no trace of the boy she once knew, cared about, even loved for a short time. He's only Haku, Yubaba's apprentice, the head witch's henchman, the cold boy in black-and-white print, leeched of color and life.

He's like a mechanical toy now, wound up again and again for Yubaba's pleasure. If Lin had her way—_and this is her final mercy to Haku, her final thought of gentleness_—she'd wind him down if only so he could be allowed to rest. There's no use trying to find the nameless boy that Haku has turned into in that shell; Lin doesn't have any hope left, certainly not for that.

Of course, Haku won't let her get close enough to wind him down. He won't let anyone get close to try.

And Lin dislikes him for that. Dislikes, because she can't hate, because even with all her bitterness and sullenness and caustic words it's not in her nature to hate. But she can dislike him, for what he did to her. Yubaba stole Haku's colors, and Haku took Lin's gentleness.

But she was gentle, once.

And when she hears Haku talking, even for a moment, Lin remembers, remembers among all the things that she has forgotten—

—That there was a time when she didn't watch the sea alone.


End file.
